Saturday, January 21, 2017

One of the first comic books I owned was Secret Origins #3
(1973), featuring the origin of Wonder Woman. The art puzzled me: While the
cover's Wonder Woman was lithe like a Seventies model with long, flowing hair,
the interior art, a reprint of the 1941 original, gave the Amazon a boxy figure
and tight curls like Betty Grable. At the time, I could barely comprehend how
art could show one character in such different ways. Now, it's easy to
understand: Each era portrayed Wonder Woman as the ideal of the times.

But those were not the only two visions of Wonder Woman
available at the time. In the very same year, the contemporary Wonder Woman was
the white-suited non-powered version who followed her mentor, I Ching. Also debuting
in 1973 was the Super Friends, which showed a Wonder Woman looking like the
Sixties version and superpowered, but nowhere near the levels of Superman. By
1976, Wonder Woman in the comics had regained her powers, while the TV version
played by Lynda Carter was set in the Forties – prompting DC's Wonder Woman
solo title to tell wartime adventures set on Earth Two (but with
Seventies-style art) – until the TV show skipped ahead, without explanation, to
the Seventies – and the comic version made the same jump, to contemporary
stories set on Earth One. In four years, fans were given seven or eight distinct
versions of Wonder Woman; trying to juggle all the various versions was
probably more complicated than understanding any of the individual stories. And
in that era before the Internet, there was no guide to any of this; it was
simply up to the fan to make sense of it.

Four decades later, the world once again abounds in
alternate versions of Wonder Woman. In 2011, the post-Crisis version of Wonder
Woman gave way to the post-Flashpoint New 52 Wonder Woman. Five years later, a tremendous
multiplicity of Wonder Women burst upon the scene. The DC Rebirth gave us a new
"main" Wonder Woman who is still trying to unravel the secrets of her
past, which involves some medley of the New 52 and other elements. Then, within
just a few months, DC published two distinctly different Wonder Woman origin
graphic novels – the long-awaited "Earth One" from Grant Morrison,
and Jill Thompson's Wonder Woman: The True Amazon. Between the publication
dates of those two works, the monthly title began running Greg Rucka's
"Year One" origin story; an astounding three origin stories were
published/begun in under six months! As if that weren't enough, DC's cinematic
universe introduced yet another version of Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot in
Batman v Superman, as yet mysterious with her story to be explained in a 2017
solo film. All of this came on the heels of superb work done in 2011-2014 by
Brian Azzarello, a refreshing take on Wonder Woman and her world that deserved
to serve as a foundation for a decade or more to come – like Byrne's Superman
and Miller's Batman – rather than be made obsolete after only a year.

As the character turns 75, a high degree of attention is
fitting; it is harder, however, to explain why multiple, conflicting origin stories
make for the right kind of attention. Certainly, part of the answer is that
this bouquet of origin stories was unplanned; the movies and comics are not in
sync, and Morrison's story was in the works and long delayed. Rebirth, like the
New 52, is obviously a creative direction driven by business considerations.
And there we have it: Multiple, uncoordinated creative voices led to multiple, uncoordinated
versions of one of the best-known superheroes within a very short span of time.

The rapidfire shuffle of new versions serves as a poll of
how the modern comics creator perceives Wonder Woman, and in this, we see one interesting
consensus: Azzarello, Morrison, Thompson, and Rucka all speak to the sexuality
of the Amazons in general or Diana specifically in a way that had not –
probably could not have – been seen before. Both Azzarello and Thompson
describe Amazons routinely using men from the world at large as a source of fertilization,
with hints and a choice image or two of a domination fantasy. Meanwhile,
Morrison and Rucka both give Diana female lovers in her past but leave her open
to opposite-sex attraction once Steve Trevor enters her world. These new
origins variously assert that Hercules and his men raped the Amazons, a violent
horror unimaginable in 1941 comics, a modern extrapolation of Moulton's 1941
panels showing Hercules and Hippolyta lying together as he betrays her.

Morrison and Azzarello also agree to make Diana not a
creature made of clay, but rather the direct offspring of Zeus, though
Azzarello makes her the principal god's daughter of Zeus; Morrison, his
granddaughter. Azzarello modernizes his gods by showing them in Las Vegas,
posing as truckers. Morrison modernizes Diana's world by making Steve Trevor
the descendent of African slaves, a real people with real history spent in
chains like the imaginary Amazons.

Morrison and Rucka also agree by maintaining the Steve
Trevor element in Diana's origin, while Thompson diverges sharply by making the
young Diana a spoiled brat whose journey to man's world is penance for the sin
of hubris and the tragedy it caused; it should not be lost on the reader that
in departing from Moulton's original story, Thompson's is classically Greek
– character flaws determine the future. A tragedy doesn't happen to a person; a tragedy is who they are. This is the great
contribution of Thompson's version, and makes it welcome despite the certain
overcrowding of recent origin stories. Thompson abandons the 1941 source
material to emphasize in tone the vastly earlier source material of Greek
mythology.

None of these stories disagree on one thing: Wonder Woman is
wonderful. Nolan's cinematic Wonder Woman immediately wows Superman and Batman
by battling Doomsday energetically and somewhat enthusiastically. Rucka and
Morrison show the modern world pointing its cellphone cameras at Diana and snapping
away, hashtagging her into social media immortality. She glows, indifferent to
the attention, like a Forties movie star sipping a milkshake while the world
adores her. She's beautiful, strong, brave, and brilliant; there is no
depiction of Wonder Woman that doesn't agree on this.

For all these many versions, and creators, it is Rucka and
the filmmakers who get to hold serve. Rucka has suggested a multiplicity of
Wonder Women in his single version, with a composite past or composite memories
of various pasts, with a Multiverse backstory that may involve the overarching
Rebirth plot with Dr. Manhattan at the center. Perhaps he will make these
alternate memories not "lies" surrounding one true backstory but
disparate elements all partly true; this is akin to what Geoff Johns did with
Superman in Secret Origin and Morrison in his Batman epic that
asserted that all past eras actually happened to the one and only Batman.
Wonder Woman is not the first superhero to get multiple, contradictory origin
stories; hopefully one of them – and it would be Rucka's – has the
chance to be left uncontradicted long enough to give a generation of readers a
firm legend to believe in.

However many people read DC's comics, far more will see the
2017 movie, and this will become the "real" Wonder Woman for a
generation. This Wonder Woman, we know from the trailer, rescues a crashing
Steve Trevor and comes to man's world to stop World War One (not Two). Until
the movie debuts, we can guess the details of the content, and one clue is a
canny reply to the old stories. In 1942's All
Star Comics #12, as the men on the team head off to battle the Axis, Wonder
Woman, one of the mightiest heroes in the story, stays home, bidding the male
heroes, "Good luck, boys – and I wish I could be going with you,"
after having agreed off-panel to be their secretary. In 2017, Steve Trevor
introduces Diana as his secretary, and after we see her perform some wonderful
heroics, he adds, "She's a very good secretary." After 75 years, we
can poke fun at 1942's prejudices. Maybe after another 75 years, audiences won't
be expected to find that funny.

9 comments:

I remember my mind being blown to realize Superman had been rebooted and significantly changed a few years before I was born. It's nothing compared to confusing changes to Wonder Woman, but I'm glad Rucka found a way to make it work in canon via conflicting memories. Stracinsky and Jim Lee hinted at that before in their pre-Flashpoint leather jacket run. Mythology is stories, and changes to their timeline can happen at the whim of the gods.

Still not as satisfying as Diana asserting herself as authentic, against Queen of Fables, in Simone's run.

Jacob, I'm eternally mesmerized by the 1986 Superman reboot, not only for the event itself and how it was done, but what it says about what is mutable and immutable about these characters. I think it says something about WW's rapid reinventions that one can list so many examples focusing, as I did, on the mid-Seventies and last few years, and yet saying nothing of the tremendous changes wrought in runs by Perez, Straczynski, and Simone.

I really hope the reinventions can be completed and the current era can have a chance to tell tales of Wonder Woman for years to come.

Fascinating post. My sense is reinvention comes from one of two factors: 1.) Deep and abiding interest in a character. Or, 2.) Sales in need of a kick start.

It's probably no coincidence Superman has gone through his own iterations of origin/coming of age tales this century, including Waid, Johns and Morrison, since he hasn't been a top-of-the-heap character in nearly three decades now.

I agree Azzarello's WW run deserved to have lasting impact. Fascinating take. But it's rare such impacts last anymore, unless a writer is lucky enough to have Peter Tomasi following him/her (Damian;s story and now Multiversity both advanced in recent years by him). This makes me appreciate the power of editors to enforce continuity in decades gone by (Mort Weisinger kept the Superman books on track that way for roughly 15 years).

MW10E, Wonder Woman is one of the top characters in the DCU, but isn't driving the direction; I think, clearly, most of the creative decisions with WW lately have been driven by company decisions… They correspond to IC, the New 52, and Rebirth, so in terms of WW herself, the changes happen because a change needs to happen, for the sake of change.

WW: Earth One was not well-timed, and was – in fact – one of the most-delayed publications I can name, after only Miller's All-Star Batman which simply went defunct. Given the timing, it's curious to me that Thompson's take got the green light, although I appreciate the quality of it.

Jacob,Your comment, in its generality, makes me reflect (as I am wont to do) on the medium as a whole, and to draw a comparison that I haven't made before, between DC's superhero line and the oral tradition of, e.g., Greek mythology. At many points in time, DC has proposed a fresh start (and at many, many more points in time, readers have proposed or anticipated this), and yet it never happens. Even the post-Crisis world inherited some of the pre-Crisis continuity in confusing ways, and what the New 52 inherited from pre-Flashpoint continuity was far from certain before the point was made moot by Rebirth! (I still don't know what the status of, e.g., Doomsday was in the New 52.)

To echo things I've said in other blog posts on other topics, DC continuity was almost obsolete as soon as it got started, as one could arguably say that c. 1969 marked the first time that DC continuity was really, thoroughly established and by 1978, creators were expressing that it needed to be cleaned up.

Now that 1978 is nearly as distant from us as Action Comics #1 was from 1978, I think it's safe to say that cleanups and future cleanups are a nice idea that isn't apt to materialize and that one and all should accept a different reality, that shifting continuity with lots of confusion is the permanent status quo.

If someone yearns for a consistent, clean DC reality, I'd point them to New Frontier and other works clearly not in current continuity. For the monthly comics, the only constant is change.

Maybe in 2035, DC's 100th anniversary, they'll be bold enough to reboot their entire universe, as if they were starting from scratch. No continuity to follow, no previous stories in play. The opportunities would be endless, the freedom for creators would be unimaginable.

Not likely to happen, but I suspect it would open the door to lots new readers over time.

An idea that I've contemplated is that perhaps instead of rebooting and going forward for as long as it works, they should at some point do a reboot with a definite end in mind – say, 120 issues = 10 years. Then they could set up a climax with a high degree of anticipation and – like, say, Injustice: Gods Above Us – they could make some major changes such as deaths that actually count in the limited span of the work.

What they need to beware is an endless series of reboots that mildly tweak previous versions or they will wear reader interest down to the nub.

Just checking in on Rikdad :) Seeing a familiar face pop-up in the latest Nightwing story made me think about how I haven't heard from my favorite comics blogger in a while. Would love to hear your thoughts on this Nightwing story, everything that's been going on in Superman lately, and of course The Button! :) I hope you are well.